NEW YORK, June 13. /TASS/. Russia was invited to attend memorial ceremonies dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landing in Normandy but the administration of US President Joe Biden insisted on cancelling the invitation, US Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his Substack blog.
The journalist wrote, citing an informed American official, that representatives of Russia were initially scheduled to participate, but "at the insistence of the Biden administration the invitation was canceled."
"More than 20 million Russian men and women died in World War II—more than enough, I would think, to earn a seat at the table," the journalist wrote.
During a meeting with the heads of international news agencies, held on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 5, Putin said that Western countries hesitated to invite Russia, the successor of the Soviet Union which sustained "enormous losses" in World War Two.
Commemorative events of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, which marked the opening of the second front in Western Europe, are held every five years with the participation of foreign leaders and veterans.